The spill took place Friday at a power plant in an outlying section of the city of Norilsk, 2900 kilometers (1800 miles) northeast of Moscow.

Booms were laid in the Ambarnaya River to block the fuel. The river feeds a lake from which springs another river that leads to the environmentally delicate Arctic Ocean. The area where the spill occurred is closer to the traditional homelands of the Nenets and northern Norway than Alaska. However, the fish and marine mammals of the Arctic Ocean and its interrelated coastal seas are an important source of food for Inuit and other Arctic Indigenous peoples.